Always and Eternity
by Trinilee Greenleaf
Summary: A Halloween special. What happens when your nightmares become reality?


Hey guys!!

Blimey it's been so long since I've posted a fic here!! Sorry about that. Anyways!!

Read...if you dare!! MUHAHAHA!! more maniacal laughter

Written by: Trinilee Greenleaf

Title: Always and Eternity

Summary: A Halloween special. What happens when your nightmares become reality?

Rating: K

Disclaimer: I don't own any Lotr characters. Except Legolas!! Sigh  
no I unfortunately don't own him either. But I might soon. If I can  
just prove that I am a descendant of Tolkein. evil laughter

Author's Note: This is a short piece that I wrote a couple of years  
ago for a school assignment. I managed to get an A+ for it so I hope  
you like it!! Obviously been adapted though.

A dark lonely corridor stretched out in front of me. Dust caked the floor in a thin layer, undisturbed. Except by two footprints that I knew didn't belong to me. Stranger still, they were halfway up the passage and there were no other prints leading away from them, and no doors on either side.

A faint breath on my neck made me whip my head around. No-one there. I was alone. I repeated it again and again in my head. If I said it enough maybe it would be real.

I stepped forward and threw my hands up to cover my face as the dust under my feet flew into the air around my head. I coughed harshly as the filth made its way into my mouth, tickling my throat and making my eyes water. I clamped a hand down over my mouth, trying to stop the coughing and subconsciously, to muffle the noise I was making. But there was no-one there! There was no-one to hear me cough, cry, or even scream. I was alone in this dreadfully dreary place and I knew it! Or did I? I was fooling myself into believing yet again that there no-one there. In the back of my mind the delusion I was trying to shroud myself in was breaking, memories and past experiences were pushing through.

When the coughing finally stopped, I looked up through tear-stained eyes and blinked rapidly to clear the moisture away so as to confirm what I was seeing. The foot prints were gone. No wait, they were back but that was not where they had been before. They were several feet closer and about five inches to the right of their previous position I was sure of it!

BANG!

I flew round to stare into the blackness that followed behind me. It had sounded like the noise of a door closing, but I knew there was no door. The corridor just went on for miles and miles, dark shadows and shapes continued for always and eternity, those very words which were etched in the dust at my back; drawn by dark cold fingers, a message that ghosted my every footstep.

There was nothing I could do. No where I could go. And even worse, Estel was here. I could feel him close and could feel the way he screamed out for help, my help. But I couldn't reach him. I would never be able to find him in this place. I had tried so many times before and always with the same results. I knew what was to come and so turned to look into the face of the owner of those footprints.

He was real and as he always told me, I should stop trying to convince myself he wasn't. Telling myself I was alone_ didn't_ make it true. He would always win, always. And as he grinned into my face and then advanced upon me, I couldn't help let out a pain-filled scream, as I always did.

"ESTEL!"

Jolting awake, I felt myself slipping and the image of my room shrouded in darkness tipped to the side as I fell off my bed. I was drenched in cold sweat and my arms and legs ached from where I had played out the actions of my dreams in the real world. I could feel my muscles burning from where I had spent the night running constantly, wrenching open doors and hitting walls in frustration which had caused the grazes on my knuckles. My throat burned from all the screaming and shouting and my eyes stung from the constant crying, tears still running down my face even as I wiped them away.

But there was something different. Something that did not coincide with the order of events I had come to expect over the past three restless months. There was something that wasn't sweat or tears crawling down my cheek. It was dripping noiselessly onto my arm and I stared at it in confusion.

Slowly raising the fingers of my opposite hand, I ran them along my cheek, jumping slightly as I felt the wetness on my skin. I brought my fingers in front of my eyes, stained in the liquid that was still sliding at a snail's pace down my visage.

Blood.

There was a long cut that ran along the length of my left cheek. And I remember how it happened. But that couldn't be right! The scratch had happened in my dream, the dream that I knew wasn't real. But, how could I argue the fact that the blood on my fingers wasn't real. How could I when it was staring me in the face, literally!

But He had done this in my dream. He had drawn his sharpened claws across my face just before I had run from the first room. He always did, but it had never before followed me into the waking world. Never before had any of the many cuts and bruises I received in my world-wind chase through the passages of the abandoned house and my unconscious mind appeared when the dream ended. However, they had this time. I could feel them. The bruises on my legs from where I had hit them on the third door as it closed. The scrapes on my knees from my continuous falling to the cold hard floor after tripping over my too tired feet. The finger marks around my neck from where He had grabbed me in the final moments of my life and trance-like dream. They were all there.

I grabbed the flint that resided behind me on the bedside table and snatched up the candle that stood behind it. My room was instantly flooded with a bright light as the candle caught fire. Getting slowly to my feet, untangling myself from my bed sheets as I did so, I looked up, only to jump back and scream. For there, written in something that I refused to acknowledge as anything other than innocent red paint, was the words that had followed me throughout my nightmares.

'Always and Eternity'

I unfroze my immobilized body and forced it to run across the length of my room and through the door at the end. Like a warg racing in for the kill, I dashed along the hall and through another door to my left. An unsettling feeling in my stomach sent a message to my brain that these actions reminded me of something. Reminded me of what I thought I had just woken from, and that I would have another twenty-four hours before I would have to relive again.

Skidding to a halt, I tried to slow my pounding heart by taking in slow, deep breaths. Tip-toeing forward, I tried to make as little noise as possible, confident that my gwador was just asleep and that should I wake him he would throw his pillow at me and a brief play-fight would ensue rather than admitting to myself that something more horrendous might happen.

The balcony doors chose that moment to suddenly crash open, the drapes billowing out into the cold night air and the shutters crashing against the wall. A rush of wind swept into the room and brought with it a drizzle of rain from the outside. It cooled my face and I sighed as the tiny droplets slipped their way down my neck, bringing me out of my fear and into a calmer interior.

I continued my way over to the bed, not bothering to go over and close the clattering doors. I stretched my hand out to pull back the covers that hid the form I could see huddled beneath. But then I pulled my hand back as though it had been snapped at by a vicious animal. Something else had caught my eye. Something that I would never have dreamt to see even in my nightmares. For this was not a world I could just wake up from, this was reality and everything that happened here could never be erased.

The hand that previously had been ready to draw back the backcloths continued in a new direction, up to the top of the bed where the rainbow-covered headboard had previously resided. But now instead, stood a huge, dark-grey slab of rock.

A gravestone.

I stumbled back in shock, tripped over a discarded toy and fell hard against the wardrobes. A flash of lightening illuminated the area and I could read the words inscribed.

Estel. Our light and hope. Always and Eternity

I jumped to my feet and rushed over to the covers. I gathered all my courage and before I had the time to talk myself out of it, had pulled back the quilt. And there, eyes wide and merciless, yellow and blood-stained, clothes tattered and torn and never cleaned nor repaired, face twisted in what could somehow be something akin to a smile, was Him.

And that was when I knew that I would see Estel again, and that we would finally be free of the beast that haunted us even in our waking moments. We would be together where he couldn't harm us.

I braced myself as he rose from the bed to tower over me and felt neither fear nor pain as I drew my final breaths.

Legolas Thranduilion. Free for Always and Eternity

I VethReviewers shall be rewarded with treats!! Everyone else gets a trick!!  
An evil trick!! MUHAHAHAHA!!

So what I'm getting into the spirit of things?? lolzz

Happy Halloween everybody!!

Lotsa love,  
Trini  
xxxxxxxxxxx  
Don't let the bed bugs bite!!


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